As Charon circles Pluto in the gif, the moon's dark pole starts to revolve and Pluto's strange dark and light patches become more clear. These images may not seem like much at first, but they are some of the best views we have of a world that has never been explored at close range before. And boy does it seem like a weird place, even from New Horizon's position about 11 million miles from the dwarf planet.

"We've known before New Horizons that there are lots of bright and dark patches [on Pluto]," New Horizons co-investigator Marc Buie told Mashable in an interview.

"In fact, there are regions on the surface that have to be as dark as anything we've ever seen in the solar system."

Scientists have also found very bright spots in places on the icy dwarf planet, and that juxtaposition of dark and light on the same cosmic object is somewhat strange in the solar system, Buie added.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken images of the dwarf planet and its moons before, but none of the spacecraft flung near and far into the cosmos have ever taken a close look at Pluto before. Even the twin Voyager probes — one of which is now in interstellar space — didn't take a detour to check out Pluto when the two probes flew past Neptune.

New Horizon's is NASA's first chance to get up-close and personal with the dwarf planet.

Artist's rendering of New Horizons at Pluto.

Image: JHUAPL/SwRI

The probe — which launched to space in 2006 — recently detected methane on Pluto's surface. The frozen compound was actually first seen on the dwarf planet in 1976, according to NASA. While a lot of methane on Earth is produced through biological processes, scientists think that the methane seen on Pluto might be primordial, left over from the beginning of the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, NASA said.

New Horizons also recently performed an important observation of the sun that should prepare the probe for a peek at Pluto's atmosphere hours after the craft leaves the tiny world behind post-flyby. Scientists will train New Horizons' gaze on Pluto after it has passed the dwarf planet in order to see the sun shine through the atmosphere, hopefully giving researchers a glimpse at the atmosphere's composition.

“It will be as if Pluto were illuminated from behind by a trillion-watt light bulb,” New Horizons scientist Randy Gladstone said of the future observation in a statement.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.